Bill > A4794

Introduced Session

This bill supplements the State's charter school law by prohibiting a charter school from contracting with a for-profit charter management organization to provide any operation or management services to the charter school. Under the bill, any charter management organization that provides operation or management services to a charter school in New Jersey would have to be a nonprofit organization. The bill also supplements the charter school law by adding certain requirements related to a charter school's budget and financial transparency. The bill directs charter schools to annually submit their budget for the upcoming school year to the Commissioner of Education for review. The budget will include information on all revenues, expenses supported by those revenues, and any in-kind contributions received by the charter school. The bill provides that the charter school's budget will be posted for public inspection on the charter school's website, if one exists, and made available in print in a "user-friendly" format using plain language. The commissioner will promulgate the "user-friendly" plain language budget summary format. The plain language budget summary will be submitted to the Department of Education, which will also make it available to the public on its website. In addition, the bill requires a charter school board of trustees to have an annual audit conducted of the charter school's accounts and financial transactions pursuant to the provisions of N.J.S.18A:23-1 et seq., which also governs audits of each school district. The report of each annual charter school audit must be filed, by the public school accountant making the report, with his recommendations with the charter school board of trustees and with the commissioner. The commissioner annually will publish a summary of the recommendations made for each charter school and the steps that have been taken in each charter school for their implementation. Lastly, the bill imposes financial disclosure requirements on charter management organizations. Under the bill, a charter management organization that provides operation or management services to a charter school in the State must annually submit the following information to the Commissioner of Education: (1) identification of each charter school in the State served by the charter management organization; (2) a list of the officers and members of the management team, board, or other governing body of the charter management organization; (3) a certified audit statement of all revenues and all expenditures related to the organization's function as a charter management organization in this State; and (4) identification of all donors that provided contributions to the charter management organization and all donors that provided contributions to each charter school served by the organization. The bill requires the Department of Education to make the information submitted by charter management organizations publicly available on the department's website.

AI Summary

Committee Categories

Mila Jasey (D)*,  Andrew Zwicker (D)*, 

Introduced, Referred to Assembly Education Committee (on 12/10/2018)